


And sometimes I don't want them.

by hellskitchensmurdock



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Post-Episode s06e10, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 23:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19936180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellskitchensmurdock/pseuds/hellskitchensmurdock
Summary: The calm before the storm is tense. The calm after it is too much the opposite and all Fitz can do in it is think.





	And sometimes I don't want them.

If he is being honest, Fitz gets sick of his thoughts. So fucking sick of them. For the most part. they aren’t bad ones; just new inventions (not ones that will cause death, he’s sure) or ideas for dates with Jemma or conversations he’ll never have with his mum, with Trip, even Ward sometimes, if he has enough alcohol to allow those thoughts.

(In mindfulness activities they always say to imagine your thoughts on a leaf floating down a stream. Meaning: have the thought then let it go. Fitz finds that bullshit. He can’t even fucking visualise the river in his head. It’s all darkness.

This isn’t relevant.)

Still, there are times when he wants to shut them up. Cut whatever thought he’s having off and be consumed by the blankness the quiet leaves. Especially at midnight when his head is pounding. 

Midnight has never been late for Fitz, even if he feels tired. Back in Scotland, as a child, he had trouble sleeping, even before his father left. When he went to the academy he was always up late cramming; his eyes may have been heavy but the night was when he worked best. Once he graduated and started working for SHIELD he always had odd hours; sometimes he’d get lost in a project and continue working until Simmons came in the next morning, looking fresh and bright while he felt the complete opposite.

He can’t help but smile as he remembers how she would sigh and tell him to clean up, how she would have breakfast and a coffee ready for him when he comes back.

He can’t even hold his smile long as his brain feels likes it's being hit with a hammer over and over. Harsher each time. Even then, as his head pounds harder than his heart, he still can’t stop thinking.

His thoughts keep drifting back to Coulson. (So much for that fucking river.) The way he was weak and tired in Jemma’s memory. The way Coulson was standing over his body. His own body.

His own dead fucking body.

Fitz thinks he should be thinking more about his own death, but he doesn’t see a point to it. There was a loop, the version of him stuck in the loop was killed and he, himself, is out of the loop and alive. That was that.

(Of course there was more to it, but he wasn’t going to think about it. Not before when he was in the mind prison or on his way home, not now with his brain pulsing, pounding, banging, whatever, and certainly not later when they would have to continue to deal with Izel and oh God Davis…)

But Coulson. There were so many things left unsaid, things he’s sure he’ll eventually think up. As sits on the freezing floor in one of the many damp hallways of the lighthouse, he can’t stop thinking about one particular thing.

Maybe it could’ve been a hug or maybe a simple nod. He’s sure he would’ve tried to make sure he didn’t cry; whether he would have succeeded or not is another question, one that would never be answered.

Because he never got to say goodbye.

He never got to say goodbye to the man who had been like a father to him for years, whether either of them realised it or not. He never got to say goodbye to the other man who was like a father, even if he had betrayed him, or to a friend who died at the bottom of a hole or his real father.

He’s not even sure when his father left anymore.

He’s not drunk enough to think about that.

He’s not drunk at all.

He’s near paralysed, on the freezing cold concrete, his head pounding and his thoughts not going anywhere.

It all felt fuzzy. The brightness above him made everything seem a fraction less real. It reminded him of the framework; he sometimes muses on how it would’ve felt if he knew he was in there. Only occasionally. No use getting caught up in that.

Except sometimes he does, he can’t help it. He nitpicks at every little thing he did within the framework, analysing it. At first, it was almost obsessive. Then he got locked-up and distracted and now he has more control over those particular thoughts. 

It’s only one tiny thing he has control over.

There’s still so much chaos.

He’s not even sure when his father left anymore.

He thinks his father stayed longer, taught him to speak German. Or maybe that was the late nights in bed procrastinating the boring schoolwork he’d have to catch up on. 

He thinks that he remembers German more clearly since being in the framework.

He thinks he doesn’t know.

(He does, but admitting it means it’s real and that’s the last thing he wants.)

His thoughts wander back to Coulson. How he was tired and shaky and weak and on Tahiti with May until the very last moments and she deserves better they all deserve better and Fitz wasn’t surprised when he saw that it was getting closer to one in the morning. It isn’t late, but he’s tired. Just like at midnight. At eleven. At ten. At nine. At eight. At seven. At six, five, four, three, two, one. 

The cycle continues. 

He’s always tired.

The darkness is setting in.

The dark thoughts which consume him. Which are ever-present, but less demanding in the light of day or Jemma. Which would bring him close to tears if his pounding fucking headache hadn’t got to it first.

He should have some painkillers.

He should be dead instead of Coulson.

Things don’t always go the way they should, the universe had a funny way with that. Like how the cosmos thinks it's funny to fuck with him. Sending him and the girl he loves to the bottom of the ocean, letting them get split by Hydra and space and virtual realities and space. 

Maybe the cosmos loves Jemma as much as he does.

Maybe he is just a narcissistic monster who was pushing the blame of his own faults onto the universe because of pride.

Or because he couldn’t bear to have anything else be his fault.

Fitz considered getting up, only for a brief moment. Any movement of his head made him fall back down. It felt light and heavy at the same time, just as the colours that crossed his eyes were both light and dark. They swirled into prettier patterns than he had ever drawn on his designs, that Jemma had ever worn back when they were young and childish and more inclined to express themselves.

Where did the young them go? The two of them so fascinated by every invention, every mission. He knows Jemma is getting annoyed at the constant running and fighting and kidnapping and he himself wants to set fire to something. Maybe the site of the next mission, or perhaps his ideas; he could write or draw or scribble them into a cheap book and burn them all. 

Maybe he could just burn his brain.

Maybe that’s a good time to stop. Stop thinking, just the thinking, just temporarily. He lets out a breath when he realises he believes that. 

Fitz reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, thankful he had asked Daisy, who was Skye back then, to download a list of albums and miscellaneous songs he enjoyed at the time and still does. He could have done it himself but he was working on some designs and she owed him a favour for something he can’t remember. He thinks that happened in the framework too, with AIDA.

(Sometimes he still, accidentally, calls her Ophelia. It sends a chilling shiver down his spine every time.

This also isn’t relevant. None of this is. He’s stopped caring.) 

Obviously, he has a different phone now, but it had been easy enough to transfer it all when he had modified both the internal software and the external structure of the newest model of iPhone. It’s a few years old now, but the shitty slowness affecting the other phones doesn’t happen to his, so it doesn’t matter.

He put the music on shuffle, leaving on whatever came on first. It’s Queen, he thinks. The volume is one off of being on mute and his phone his right next to his ear. He focuses on the words and the cold concrete beneath him and eventually, it all fades.

The music, the pounding, the cold. He doesn’t notice, though. That tends to happen when falling asleep. 


End file.
